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Rain Delay… Some Hail

The good news is we did finally get some significant moisture totals on our north land (south land received less), but it did come with a major hail storm. We ended up with between 40-60mm last week up north and 20-25mm down south – this is welcome and appreciated, even though it is the middle of harvest. Along with those heavier rain amounts up north, the hail that came with it was not welcome but seems to be par for the course this year. We have about 30-40% of our total canola acres that were hit in this storm with between 10% damage to as high as 100%. The canola crop was fairly mature, which magnified the damage.

The soil moisture profile shows a good response to this moisture, as you can see how the 10cm and 20cm levels on the moisture probe peaked, and the 30cm level also had a good response. Any additional moisture will be welcome and we should start to see the moisture go further into the subsoil. We need a big recharge of our subsoil moisture this fall prior to freeze-up.

As far as harvest progress goes – it was a slower week due to the rain delays, but we did get the cereals done. As of Monday, we finished the last wheat field and started into canola. From the first wheat we harvested prior to the rain delays, to the last wheat we harvested, you can really see how quickly the quality degrades as this last wheat was bleached and showed some early signs of sprouting. We will be sending the samples away for quality assessment. Really shows how drying tough grain pays off – never take a possible harvest day in August for granted. Quality discounts in grain are considerably higher than any drying costs.

This week looks like we could see another rain delay early in the week followed by some cooler weather. Canola dries quick, especially when left standing. We don’t anticipate being down too long once this system passes through.

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